Note that the AVR Dragon should be connected through a powered USB hub. This is because the power supply on the Dragon can be to weak if the motherboard does not provided enough power. If the Dragon times out or freezes, then the hub might be of to low quality.

Im using the SPI/ISP port on the AVR Dragon and Im using jumper leads that go from the AVR Dragon to the breadboard. Power is being suppled from a 5V plugpack. It worked fine with the ATAVRISP MKII programmer.

A common reason for invalid signature is an ISP clock that is running too fast. It must be no higher than 1/4 the MCU clock and preferably a bit lower than this. For example, if the MCU is one of the ones that typically runs at 1MHz internal default, then the ISP clock should be no higher than 250KHz and much preferably 125KHz. If it is running with an 8MHz clock, then 1MHz ISP clock is a good choice.

It is also important to remember that an external crystal is NOT used until the fuse has changed. Thus, even if you have an external 8MHz crystal and the MCU, out of the box, uses 1MHz internal RC oscillator, you must set the ISP to 125KHz because that is set by the MCU clock that is actually running when you try to program it. As far as I know, the new fuse setting is not active until the MCU goes through a reset cycle.

Specify the bit clock period for the JTAG interface or the ISP clock (JTAG ICE only). The value is a floating-point number in microseconds. The default value of the JTAG ICE results in about 1 microsecond bit clock period, suitable for target MCUs running at 4 MHz clock and above. Unlike certain parameters in the STK500, the JTAG ICE resets all its parameters to default values when the programming software signs off from the ICE, so for MCUs running at lower clock speeds, this parameter must be specified on the command-line. It can also be set in the configuration file by using the ’default_bitclock’ keyword.

At the time of writing (beg. of 2016), the old and discontinued JTAGICEmkII seems to be the best supported option on Linux, so I got myself a used one of those. The current Atmel-ICE Basic doesn't seem to work at all with AVaRICE because it uses a completely different protocol. Alternatives to the JTAGICEmkII are the AVR Dragon and possibly JTAGICEmkII clones like the ones from Kee Electronics and Waveshare. While both claim to be fully compatible on Windows, there is no statement on Linux compatibility.

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9. Start AVaRICE

The following command should do:

avarice -2 -w -Patmega328p -j usb :4242

Successfully started, AVaRICE should give the following output:

AVaRICE version 2.13svn20141210, Mar 6 2016 17:51:25

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1. Debugging in Eclipse

P.S.

EDBG (Atmel-ICE) entered AVaRICE on 2016-02-29 then mEDBG in 2016-03; current is r372 on 2016-04-18.

Sorry for bugging yall, but I'm trying to get an avr dragon to run on linux, but it doesnt seem to be recognized (as a node i.e. /dev/ttyUSB). Could you please do me a favor and see what you get when you run this command:

You really think it has nothing to do with The problems with the AVR Dragon on Linux?

Don't only look at the subject line of a thread. That is much to imprecise to deem if you "have the same problem". Read the entire first post and see if the problem described fits your situation.

It's almost always better to start a new thread, instead of tacking your post onto an existing one. Especially so when the thread is old or oldish.

Regardless of that this is certainly a cross-post, which is also frowned upon.

As of January 15, 2018, Site fix-up work has begun! Now do your part and report any bugs or deficiencies here.

No guarantees, but if we don't report problems they won't get much of a chance to be fixed! Details/discussions at link given just above.

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